Challenges to Improving U.S. Space Situational Awareness Sharing: - - PDF document

Challenges to Improving U.S. Space Situational Awareness Sharing: Presentation Given at 2012 AMOS SSA Policy Forum

September 11, 2012 By Tiffany Chow Project Manager Secure World Foundation

Promoting Cooperative Solutions for Space Sustainability

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ABOUT SECURE WORLD FOUNDATION

Secure World Foundation (SWF) is a private operating foundation dedicated to the secure and sustainable use of space for the benefit of Earth and all its peoples. SWF engages with academics, policy makers, scientists and advocates in the space and international affairs communities to support steps that strengthen global space sustainability. It promotes the development of cooperative and effective use of space for the protection of Earth’s environment and human security.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiffany Chow is a Project Manager for Secure World Foundation, where she oversees and supports projects dealing with international security and legislative issue areas. She has been active in the international relations and international security fields for the past four years and brings to SWF a diverse range of experience. Prior to joining Secure World Foundation, Tiffany worked for the Center for American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA where she assisted the Director and Administrative Director with research projects and program logistics. Before that, she interned with the Monterey Institute for International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) in Washington, DC where she provided research support on a wide array of topics including export control issues in the United Arab Emirates, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, and the potential for microreactors to be used for the proliferation of chemical weapons. Tiffany held this internship while participating in the prestigious UCLA Quarter in Washington program, where she also completed a large-scale independent research paper entitled "Reevaluating the Nonproliferation Regime: An Application of John Ruggie's Regime Theory." Education Tiffany received her Master of Arts degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. At SAIS, she specialized in General International Relations and International Economics and was involved in SAIS Leads, the school's leadership development program. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she double majored in European Studies and Political Science, with an emphasis in International Relations. She has also studied at the University of Cambridge in England and in Rome, Italy.

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CONTENTS

List of Acronyms ……………………………………………………………………………. V Introduction …………………………………………………..…………………………...… 1 Official Position of U.S. Government ……………………………………………………… 1 SPADOC & CAVENet: The Challenges They Create ……………………………………. 2 International Perception ……………………………………………………………………. 2 Conclusions ………………………………………………………………………………...… 4

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LIST OF ACRONYMS

CAVENet – Correction, Analysis, and Verification of Ephemerides Network CSM – Conjunction support Messages IT – Information Technology JSpOC – Joint Space Operations Center SDA – Space Data Association SPADOC – The Space Defense Operations Center SSA – Space situational awareness USG – United States Government

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INTRODUCTION

For those who are not familiar with our organization, Secure World Foundation is a private

• perating foundation focused on promoting cooperative solutions to space sustainability. Space

sustainability is all about ensuring that we can continue using space in the long-term for all of the benefits it affords us, from national security to environmental monitoring, from communications to navigation, and much more. SWF engages with academics, policy makers, scientists and advocates in the space and international affairs communities to support cooperative solutions that strengthen space sustainability. In pursuit of that space sustainability goal, we have worked extensively on the issue of SSA data sharing and cooperation, specifically from an international perspective. Our overall goal is to see that all satellite owner operators have access to the SSA data and tools that they need to operate safely and responsibly in space. And this comes with a recognition that no one actor alone can bear the cost or responsibility of providing comprehensive, accurate SSA that would ensure safe space operations for the many entities active in space today. In order to get to a place of safe and sustainable space activity, we have to work together on SSA.

OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Recent policy guidance in the 2010 National Space Policy and the 2011 National Security Space Strategy indicates that the U.S. administration shares this sentiment. The U.S. government considers SSA to be an important national security priority. As we all know, the United States military operates the most extensive and advanced SSA network today. It does this because it recognizes that as a country with one of the largest investments in and reliance upon space activities, it pays to keep tabs on the environment to ensure safety of spaceflight and operations. And all of this policy guidance comes with an emphasis on the importance of international cooperation and sharing of this information with others. First through the Commercial and Foreign Entities program and now through its reincarnation, the SSA Sharing Program, the United States shares SSA data with non-U.S. entities, including industry partners and foreign

• governments. The U.S. government and military does not do this out of the kindness of its heart,

but rather, out of an enlightened self-interest, appreciating that space safety and sustainability cannot be achieved unilaterally. However, this practice of sharing faces many challenges, which hinder sharing SSA in the most effective way, ultimately undermining space safety and

• sustainability. I’ll be talking about a few of those challenges today, especially from an

international perspective.

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SPADOC & CAVENET: THE CHALLENGES THEY CREATE

The first challenge to better SSA sharing has to do with the information technology (IT) architecture used to maintain the core element of the U.S. military’s SSA capabilities, the satellite catalog. The two IT systems at the heart of the U.S. military’s SSA capabilities, SPADOC and CAVENet, date back to the 1980’s and are long past obsolete. The obsolescence

• f these decades-old IT systems has a number of negative effects, including inhibiting the ability
• f JSpOC to take in outside SSA data in a timely fashion.

Over the last twelve years, multiple procurement programs have failed to replace the two IT systems and these failures are in large part a function of the U.S. military procurement culture’s inability to develop a solution for a problem with constantly evolving requirements and reliance

• n modern software and computing hardware. And in the meantime, this reliance on these legacy

computer systems creates challenges in cooperating with allies, the commercial sector, and other partners, which is essential to SSA. Although the U.S. Air Force has announced changes for yet another attempt at solving this issue, it is doubtful these efforts will be successful as they are being developed and implemented under the same mindset and policy framework as the previous attempts. These material, cultural, and bureaucratic shackles are preventing the United States from developing the SSA capabilities it needs to meet its own national security goals and contribute to the long-term sustainability of outer space activities for all stakeholders. As long as the U.S. military continues to use these two legacy IT systems, it will face severe restrictions on the number of space objects it can catalog and track, the speed and accuracy of calculations to determine potential on-orbit collisions and warn satellite operators, its capability to share SSA data with partners and allies and ingest outside data, and its ability to take full advantage of the billions of dollars in new SSA sensors that will be coming online in the next few years.

INTERNATIONAL PERCEPTION

Even if we are able to overcome these domestic IT challenges, we would still face some difficulty in the way that the SSA Sharing Program is perceived internationally. This perception is yet another challenge in terms of SSA sharing. Some commercial and foreign users express concern about relying on a program run by a national military. Many foreign space programs are entirely civil in nature and run into bureaucratic, political, and cultural obstacles when trying to cooperate with the same branch of the U.S. military that oversees the American nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, current legislation regarding the program shields the United States from any liability associated with the information it shares. Understandably so, the USG does not want to assume any responsibility for providing or failing to provide the SSA data. This affiliation with the U.S. military and lack of accountability casts some doubt on the credibility and reliability of the information provided through the SSA Sharing Program. Furthermore, the limitations of our own SSA system lead to data and analysis that are not as accurate as possible, and in many cases, not even accurate enough to be actionable. This casts

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even more doubt on the credibility of the information we share. Earlier this year, Intelsat conducted an internal study on the Conjunction Support Messages (CSMs) that JSpOC provides to non-USG entities. The Intelsat study concluded that the CSMs provided by the U.S. military had nearly a 50 percent false positive rate (half of the warnings were issued when there was not actually a potential collision) and a 50 percent false negative rate (warnings were not issued for half of the actual close approaches). This is largely due to the fact that the JSpOC lacks information about satellite owner-operators’ planned, future maneuvers. Unfortunately, as discussed above, it is just not feasible for the IT infrastructure that JSpOC uses now to ingest this external data efficiently and in a timely manner, even though it would give us a more accurate and complete picture of what’s going on up there. There is a real disconnect between this impression others have of the JSpOC and the image that the JSpOC projects of being the best SSA resource out there. As I mentioned, these perceptions hurt the credibility of the SSA Sharing Program, leading external actors to rely on other sources for their SSA information. One such example is the private sector initiative the Space Data

• Association. The SDA has the most accurate SSA information for its members, including all the

data about future, planned maneuvers. The SDA has been in negotiations for more than two years with the U.S. government about sharing data with no resolution on the horizon, in part because of the shortcomings of SPADOC and CAVENet to accept and process operator data, but also because of national security concerns. As a result, neither party has the full set of information needed to make accurate and reliable decisions regarding safety of spaceflight and, in particular, avoiding collisions. Finally, there are some international perspectives that hinder better SSA sharing that have more to do with other nation’s priorities than current U.S. policies. First, not all spacefaring nations prioritize SSA and space sustainability as highly as the United States does. For some countries, especially emerging ones, maximizing benefit derived from space and joining the space club are far more important than mitigating debris or avoiding collisions. As such, they will choose to spend limited resources in ways other than facilitating better SSA cooperation. Second, it is important to many countries that cooperation be a two-way street. These countries are less interested in being passive consumers of the help and data doled out by the U.S. government and more interested in actively partnering with or collaborating. If they do not sense that their contribution is welcomed or valued, they may turn elsewhere, or even inward to develop indigenous capacity, rather than rely indefinitely on this sort of one-way cooperation, especially when it means inaccurate information or limited sharing.

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CONCLUSIONS

Now, I don’t want to end on a discouraging note. While there are many challenges, there are just as many benefits to increased SSA sharing, benefits that are reason enough to continue investing in improved SSA here at home, even though it will be a tough road ahead. SSA sharing increases

• ur chances of space safety and sustainability not just because it helps us prevent collisions and

debris creation, but also because it is playing an increasingly important role in international security and strategic stability. As more countries rely on space capabilities for national security, there is an increasing chance that mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust could spark or escalate conflict between states. Providing more countries with reliable, trusted, and accurate SSA can help prevent this from happening. SSA by itself cannot prevent irresponsible behavior, but it can serve as both a deterrent and a way to detect and attribute irresponsible actors and actions. In conjunction with efforts underway to establish best practices and norms of behavior in space, SSA can help responsible space actors pressure others into acting responsibly and provide the evidence necessary to take action when they do not. And as the country with the largest national security dependence on space, it makes sense for the United States to invest in a deterrent capability that will allow us to effectively monitor an increasingly important domain for irresponsible behavior and hostile action. That is just one of many reasons why improving our SSA capabilities and our capacity to share with others is worth the investment of time, energy, and resources. The ultimate goal for all stakeholders should be ensuring the long-term sustainability of Earth orbit so that humanity can continue to derive great benefits from space. Improving SSA is the foundation to acting safely and responsibly in space and helps to prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust. It will require a lot of hard work in tackling those challenges I’ve mentioned today, but I think we all know that it’s worth it.

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